


Good Things Left

by violentdarlings



Category: Z Nation (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 15:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14751812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Between seasons three and four.





	Good Things Left

“Don’t be stupid,” Doc mutters, and Addy scoots closer to him, albeit reluctantly. They’ve found a bed for the night – well, two, but Lucy had crashed into one of them, closed her eyes and refused to open them again. Addy doesn’t blame her. Lucy’s only just over a year old, for all she looks about sixteen, and she gets tired easy.

It leaves Addy and Doc with a single mattress on the floor. Doc had offered to sleep on the bare ground, but Addy remembers too many nights with nothing but her clothes cushioning rock; she knows his bones ache sometimes, and they’ll both fit on the mattress, with a bit of contortion.

She knows him better than she knows herself, most of the time. He’s the one constant from the old days, when they had Warren and a team and a mission, a purpose. But Warren is gone along with Murphy, 10K and Red to find their own way in the world, and Addy’s priorities have shrunk down to Doc and a little blonde and blue girl, keeping her safe from Zona and zombies alike.

(Zombies don’t hurt Lucy, but they love her. Sometimes too much.)

Addy hasn’t thought of anything but survival in too long. This, this is too much, being close to someone, even if that someone is Doc, who has stitched her up, carried her over his shoulder when shit went FUBAR, and held her hair back while she threw up an ill-advised combination of hickory nuts and wild asparagus. He has the same sweaty, vaguely disgusting smell that Addy herself has; _eau de_ Apocalypse, she thinks, and manages a smile.

“Share the joke,” Doc says, his voice closer to her ear than Addy would like. The puff of breath from the words skates over the sensitive skin of her neck, raising gooseflesh on her skin.

“You stink. I stink. The whole damn Apocalypse stinks,” Addy tells him bluntly.

“Is that all? Girl, that’s old news. I ain’t had a bath since –” He stops, abruptly, and heaves in a deep, shaky breath. Perturbed, Addy turns her head. Doc, the eternal optimist, whose dry humour has got Addy through more terrible days than she can count, is not smiling. If anything, he looks like he’s going to be sick.

“Since those three crazy broads tried to bedazzle your nipples?” Addy asks evenly. Doc sighs, like she’s released him from some inner torment by saying the words allowed.

“Yeah.” Addy waits, because they’ve all got issues, and having to flee a compound with three insane women masked like Leatherface, wearing little more than boxers and a pink robe. She heard the whole sorry tale while they were tracking Lucy. It’s still officially one of the fucking weirdest things Addy has ever heard of. “It’s fucked, right? It’s so fucked.”

“Totally fucked,” Addy agrees. “There’s surviving, and then there’s –”

“Growing weed in a guy’s brain,” Doc continues, shuddering, whole body shakes. Addy uses her strength – and his surprise – to flip them a bit, until she’s on her back and Doc is pressed along her side. She curls her arm until she can sling it around his shoulders, and Doc tenses for a moment before relaxing, his head pillowed on her shoulder, his bony shoulder digging into Addy’s side.

“We could go back and kill them all,” Addy says eventually, when her friend’s shakes have steadied into a mild sort of tremble. “Wouldn’t bother me at all. We could kill them and burn their torture garden to the ground.” Doc nods.

“You’re getting real good with that rifle,” he says thoughtfully. Addy lifts her hand from his shoulder, idly petting his hair. “Almost as good as 10K, even. Could probably take them out from the tree line, one by one.” Addy joins him in contemplating this, although she has less details to fill in the blanks. Still, by the blissful expression on his face, it’s a pretty picture.

“Set the house on fire,” Addy muses. “Release the poor souls they got chained up in their basement.” Doc nods fervently, but his expression, cheered for a while, has dampened again.

“Poor sons of bitches,” he agrees. “Apocalypse ain’t done right by anyone, but it seems to me they had the worst of it.” Addy shrugs. She’s seen so much shit by now that Tobias Campbell and his meat locker seem a very long time ago. Still _(walking into that cold hell of a room, bodies macerated and chopped and still alive, hands twitching, and the flay of flesh from the bone)_ –

Addy swallows, because if she doesn’t she thinks she might throw up.

“Addy,” Doc’s whispering, when she comes back to herself. “Addy, you okay?” He’s propped himself up on an elbow, eyebrows drawn together, concerned.

Fuck. Addy’s so damn tired of just surviving. It’s not a crime, to want to feel good.

Surprising herself and Doc, she leans up and kisses him on the mouth.

“Whoa!” he says, and actually pushes her away, hand tight on her shoulder, eyebrow quirked up high. “Addy, what the hell?” Addy shrugs.

“Aw, come on,” she mutters. “Lucy’s out for the count. ‘S just us. Why not?” Doc raises both eyebrows this time.

“Ain’t you too young for me?” he asks. Addy scowls at him, irritated. She’d just wanted to feel something, damn it. Hear something other than the sound of her own breathing and Lucy’s faint, snuffling snores and the screams of all the dead.

“Ain’t you too smart to think that’s a good reason to stop?” she fires back. Doc scrubs a hand through his hair.

“Hell, Addy –” She sits up, presses her mouth to his, just quickly, just for a second. Stops him talking, and such a tiny touch shouldn’t feel as damn good as it does.

“Just say so if you don’t want to,” she tells him. “I’m not gonna force you. But if you do want to, well –” She licks her lips and his eyes follow it, fuck, Addy’s missed being wanted – “I don’t think me being younger ‘n you is enough of a reason not to when we both want it.”

Doc sighs. Addy wonders if it would ever have come to this if they still had Warren, or Murphy. If Lucy had her daddy’s arms to cry into instead of Addy’s, a poor and distant second. If Red and 10K hadn’t splintered away from them, no doubt fucking like bunnies up a tree somewhere.

She hopes.

“Addy,” Doc says, as if he’s trying her name out for the first time, testing the way it feels in his mouth, “c’mere. Gonna have to get a bit closer than that.”

“Sure you remember how this goes?” she teases. “Since, y’know, you’re so old.” Doc smiles.

“You’re no spring chicken yourself,” he replies, testing the waters.

“Rude,” Addy says lightly, and takes his hand. There are years between Doc and herself, long years, of mutual eye rolls at Murphy and amusement at 10K failing yet again to notice when a girl was interested in him, years of following Warren ever westwards, the light dimming. Years, and time, and all of it gone now, except for them, and Lucy, and the road.

Addy closes her eyes, and holds onto one of the last good things left.


End file.
